Marriage Proverbs: Guidelines for a Happy Relationship (Part 1 of 0)

Guidelines for a Happy Relationship – Part 1

“He who finds a wife finds a good thing, And obtains favor from the LORD” ((Prov. 18:22 NKJV)

Prologue:

Marriage is a God given institution established from the very beginning when “… the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”[ESV] And “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:18, 24).1In ages past marriage was considered to important and serious an affair to be left to the actual participants; instead the parents mutually arranged it. In some regions of the world that may still be the case, but for all intents and purposes, in so-called advanced cultures that practice faded out in the 20th century. I doubt that there can be many in our Christadelphian community here in North America whose marriages were arranged in the fashion that Abraham did for his son Isaac!2Never ­the less, the fact that individual men and women, almost without exception, make their own free choices of whom to marry has not meant that we are necessarily wiser or happier than generations past in terms of our relationships. In fact data on the state of marriage in the United States is downright painful to contemplate and shamefully, the decay of the sanctity of marriage has also increasingly afflicted our own community.

The facts related to the decline in committed lasting unions are readily available, because the numbers of marriages and divorces is a matter of public record. Beyond the obvious numbers one can also get a picture of the details with respect to how perhaps maturity, culture and other factors might affect the chances for success or failure in a marriage. According to recent federal government statistics in 2009 there were 6.8 marriages and 3.4 divorces per 1000 people in our population.3This corresponds to approximately a 50% divorce rate, which is relatively consistent with data reported in a number of other sources.4What is quite discouraging, and at the same time painfully revealing, is that second and third marriages fail at even a greater rate than first marriages.

Divorce statistics in America for marriage5

Obviously, some people may learn from their earlier mistake(s), but most don’t. Also these numbers don’t say anything about the growing trend to co-habitat and not bother to get married at all. The percentage of the population that was married in 1970 was 72% and that has dropped to 59% by the 21st century. There is also a growing trend for couples to live and sleep together prior to marriage, claiming that they are, in effect, “trying before buying” as one young student mentioned to me at work. The presumed idea is that apparently people believe that this try out period leads to a more stable marriage relationship in the long run. Not unexpect­edly, this doesn’t seem to be the case. In fact, approximately 60% of the couples who co-habitat prior to marriage end up divorced. As one family source explains: “These couples are less likely to stay married, probably mostly due to the fact that they are less conservative about marriage and divorce in the first place.”6

The United States is not that unique among advanced industrial nations. In the United Kingdom, the divorce rate for the year 2000 for first marriages was nearly identical to the United States, approximately 51%.7One can trace the change in divorce rate in the UK from 1950, where it was only 8% and didn’t change significantly over the next 20 years until 1980 when it jumped to 38%. One can only wonder if this pattern is echoed in the decline in religion in western societies, in general, as one important factor in determining a couples’ commitment to marriage. Certainly, among close-knit religious communities, with strong family ties, such as the Amish, divorce is extremely rare.8

The divorce rates for Canada are nominally lower, but appear to be climbing into the same range as the USA and UK since the liberalization of the divorce laws in 1985. To quote one source for Canada: “The all-time ‘low’ (for the divorce rate) was in 1987, when it was expected that 50.6% of all marriages in Canada would end before the 30th wedding anniversary.”9

The fact is that almost universally the divorce rate tends to peak from around the seventh to eighth years of a marriage through the tenth and eleventh years and not immediately in the first year or two. Many experts believe this is a result not of a husband and wife waking up one day and realizing they made a mistake, but rather it is the product of pent up frustrations that stayed unresolved until they eventually lead to a rupture in the relationship. Hence, in many cases proactive counseling and the realization by the married couple that they need to address issues and solve them might be beneficial and could save many a relationship.

The nature of the family has also changed dramatically over the past 30 plus years and has put new strains upon marriage that didn’t exist in grandma and grandpa’s time, to coin a phrase! At one time the father was the primary wage earner in the family and mothers stayed home and did the housekeeping while caring for the children. This is no longer the picture of the American family. Today, most recent figures show that approximately 54% of the households in the United States have both partners working and in roughly 7% of the cases the woman is the sole bread ­winner. The latch key family today is not an anomaly, but more or less common phenomena in about half the households in America — I myself grew up in such a household with Mom working on and off to make ends meet.

There is a tendency sometimes among Christadelphians to put our heads, as it were, in the sand and act like this has nothing to do with us. After all we say, this is the world, that is not the way it is in God’s household. Unfortunately, in the almost 54 years since I was baptized, I have recently witnessed more and more breakdowns in marriages in our own community. We may not yet mirror the statistics of the rest of America, but we are certainly heading in that direction. Too often we are reactive only after the fact when the breakdown has entered a public state of affairs and remedial action is by then far too late. Many couples along the way don’t recognize the signposts that should warn them of trouble ahead, and take action themselves to move their relationship to a better place.

What will follow, in succeeding essays, will not be a comprehensive analysis that can cover every circumstance, because that would require a series of volumes. But instead it is my intention to give some scriptural guidelines that may help some in their own personal situations and make others who may be counselors aware of tools they might apply to restore relationships. None of these essays are intended to be a substitute for good professional Christian counseling where circumstances dictate.

Having said all this it is important to realize, once again, that marriage is a God given institution and should be taken very seriously. When Mary and I were married the presiding Brother included in our vows — for better or worse, till death do us part and we never gave it a second thought to have any reservations concerning those words. So lightly do some couples take their vows today that I understand from a jeweler that people rarely have their wedding bands engraved these days — just in case they eventually become community property! The Scriptures tell us that “Marriage is honorable among all” (Heb. 13:4). It is with this in mind that, Lord willing, in succeeding articles we will look at some Scriptural guidelines for a happy marriage.

  1. This is not to say that everyone must be married recall the words of our Lord Jesus Christ (Matt. 19:12) and of the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. 7:1), but this is a subject to be treated in a later essay.
  2. Genesis 24:4
  3. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/divorce.htm
  4. http://www.divorcestatistics.org/, and many similar, which you can find on the web.
  5. Jennifer Baker, Forest Institute of Professional Psychology, Springfield, Missouri.
  6. http://www.meninmarriage.com/article05.htm
  7. statistics. gov .uk /
  8. It is claimed that the divorce rate among the Amish is virtually nil. One website claims it is about 0.5%; see http://www.amish-heartland.com/amish/article/193348 and also http://www. lydiaofpurple.com/divorce_stats.htm.
  9. http://www.ottawadivorce.com/statistics.htm; Note here in the context of the article cited the word ‘low’ referred not to the divorce rate (which was indeed high) but to the emotional state of the author of the statistical study.